New job numbers, crackling with political context, suggest a potent move President Barack Obama might make in his bid for reelection—but almost certainly will not.
Lackluster US employment figures reported on May 4 cannot have cheered Obama and his political supporters.
Nonfarm payroll employment increased by only 115,000 jobs in April. The unemployment rate slipped fractionally to a still-high 8.1%. The number of people jobless more than 27 weeks remained at 5.1 million.
The economy isn’t rebuilding employment at a pace anywhere near what the president has promised during his first term in office—or maybe what he needs to win a second.
Obama has reason to crave an economic spark.
Here’s a two-step suggestion: First fire Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson, then disavow her regulatory activism.
A compulsion to do so is at hand. EPA’s South Central Region chief, Al Armendariz, resigned Apr. 30 amid controversy over a video recorded in 2010 in which he made intimidation sound like the essence of regulation.
“It is kind of like how the Romans used to conquer villages in the Mediterranean,” he said while discussing his approach to regulating hydraulic fracturing of oil and gas wells. “They’d go into a little Turkish town somewhere and they’d find the first five guys they saw and they’d crucify them.”
That enforcement zeal suits an agency that has regulated with abandon. EPA’s leap into the regulation of greenhouse gas emissions after Congress refused to enact a cap-and-trade scheme is just one example—a large and very important one.
Rogue regulation impedes economic progress. Companies know EPA rules jeopardize coal-fired power plants, for example. Expecting higher electricity costs, they limit plans to expand facilities and hire workers.
Moderating the EPA would ease anxiety over regulation and help the economy. Nothing would moderate EPA more than sacking Jackson.
Obama, however, won’t do it. Yes, he needs a prompt boost to the economy. But he needs political support from environmental extremists even more.
(Online May 4, 2012; author’s e-mail: [email protected])